Many providers offer services to consumers and commercial customers of services (“users”), such as telematics services, including, roadside assistance, emergency accident response or door unlock; home repair services, such as, for example, cable television technical work, appliance repair or delivery of an item. When a user requests a particular service of the provider, the user may contact the service provider repeatedly asking when the technician, emergency worker, or other appropriate personnel, will arrive at the user's location, or the location the user requested that the service personnel perform the requested service.
Even though a service provider central dispatcher may have dispatched personnel immediately after receiving a request for service, a user's understandable, but repeated, instances of contacting the provider can cost the provider because he, or she, needs to have more call-answering personnel available to handle a user's calls and calls from other users too. In addition, the repeated calls asking when the actual personnel will arrive at the desired location disrupt a provider's call center operation, and may cause a reduction in service quality to other callers who also need assistance.
Although the repeated calls to a provider's call center increases costs, which a provider typically passes on to the subscriber of the services, a user has a legitimate and understandable interest in knowing when to expect that emergency personnel may arrive on the scene of an accident, for example. Even in a nonemergency situation, knowing precisely when a cable television company's technician will arrive at the user's house can allow the user to spend time on a productive activity rather than wait for the technician to arrive “sometime within a four hour window,” which is typical for service providers that have to roll a truck to a user's location in a nonemergency situation.
Thus, the art needs a method and system for providing real-time information to a user of the progress of service provider personnel as they make their way from an initial location to the user's location.
In addition, service providers who deliver services to a mobile consumer, including roadside assistance, emergency accident response or door unlock, frequently arrive at the specified customer location only to discover the customer is not at the specified location. The service provider will spend time and resources searching for the customer, and consume additional call-answering resources determining a more accurate location. Frequently the customer cannot be located because they have satisfied the service need and left the specified location.
Thus, the art needs a method and system for providing real-time information to a service provider of the mobile consumer's location.